Hello again. Here is what October looks like from here: a big update next week, the charter commitments and the colony scenes later in the month, a lot of new writing, and a three-day experiment on a question many of you keep asking.

0.6.15 — next week

Everything since 0.6.14 has been about the records being honest and the screens explaining themselves. It is all on the main branch now and going through testing.

• Research programmes. Twelve studies your science staff can run during the voyage, each with a trial, something it can be applied to, and consequences that arrive later. Eight of them are only proposed after something happens aboard or something is found. A method that worked is carried through the Chronicle to later ships.
• A failed colony's beacon. A colony whose record ends with an empty last entry, a comms post and a power reserve leaves a beacon behind. A later ship on its receiving watch can hear it, then relay the record toward Sol, call the colony and wait out the round trip, or keep the record aboard.
• Why a colony died. A declining colony says so in its headline, and an emptied colony names its cause instead of just going quiet.
• A colony handbook. Five short pages that open once on your first landing and from the colony screen after that, so the first landing is not the one you learn on.
• Factions and repair. Each faction's stance now says what it does to the ship, in numbers, and the repair list tells you whether work is possible and why not. That is the screenshot above: a sealed engine, a reactor short of supplies, and the readout saying so.
• The outfitting screen tells the truth. Fitting cards show the starting resources you actually get. Modules say what they change and what they do not. Cryo suspension says which kinds of death it affects.
• Choices do what they say. Five cards promised things they did not deliver. They do now.
• The Chronicle keeps the census you played. One of you showed us a landed colony of about 6,000 recorded as under 1,300. The archive was writing its forecast over the real count. It keeps both now, with their dates.
• Larger text fits. Panels stay on screen at the biggest font size, and Operations has keyboard shortcuts.
• Probe aiming moved to the galaxy chart, and it keeps your framing.
• The writers' edit pass over the colony cards.

Later in October — 0.6.16

• Charter commitments. The nine charters have always said why your ship left Earth. Now each of them can also put an undertaking in front of you before launch, and you can take one or decline them all. A refugee ark can carry a sealed ocean refuge, or give the people still sleeping a say in choosing their home. A penal transport can promise a commutation, or a hearing at the destination. Exiled dissenters can settle beyond the order, or decide who votes next. The pilgrims, the corporate venture, the research mission, the military and the plain voyage each get two of their own. Eighteen in all, each with a dated record the Chronicle keeps, and each with real costs in people, equipment and years. They are built, translated into five of the six other languages, and in testing. If the QA holds, they ship in 0.6.16.
• Colony scenes, next pass. The planetfall and settled scenes you got in 0.6.8 to 0.6.11 are being rebuilt in modules: habitats drawn from the colony you actually built, over an environment with its own weather, lights and activity, with new modules for the Hycean and Eyeball worlds. The concept art is reviewed and production is next. Nothing to show yet.
• The galaxy chart gets softer light and some dust structure. The cover image on this post is from that branch.

The writers

Victor and Deniz joined us in September, and their first job was an edit pass over every colony card that already existed. That pass ships in 0.6.15. This week the first new cards went in.

Twenty-eight new colony events landed on Thursday, and they are written against real people and real buildings rather than a generic colonist. A botanist petitions to protect a woodland. An engineer is getting old, and the hab he keeps running is getting old with him. Two houses fall out over a trade. An expedition of fifty adults leaves and some of them do not come back. A hab collapses and stays condemned until someone deals with it. Schools need living pupils, and multiple births share a real pair of parents. Ten more cards are in review.

From 5 October to 1 November the two of them are writing new cards rather than editing old ones. The century band first, because it is the thinnest part of the game at 33 cards. Then the things that have been happening in the simulation without anyone writing about them: a founding line dying out, cryo pods failing, a society climbing a tier or losing one, succession coming round again, a probe coming home, a crew in good spirits. After that, versions of the fixed cards that change with your faction, charter and identity, and a few more late directives per faction.

Cards land weekly with their English sources, and the translations follow in the release after each batch.

Numbers before launch

Outfitting picks and modifiers still do not carry numbers. That changes this month: what a part costs, what it changes, and by how much, on the card, before you commit.

A multiplayer spike

Since launch, the question we get most is some form of "could a friend join?" Either on the same ship, or in a rival ship heading out at the same time.

In late October, after 0.6.15 and the commitments have landed, we are taking three days to find out. Two shapes are on the table:

• The council. Friends join one ship. Each year's decision goes to a vote, or to a named officer.
• The rival ship. Two players launch into one Chronicle sky, different ships, and meet through records, signals and the beacon, never in real time.

This is a spike, not a feature. It answers whether the game can carry a second player and what that would cost in saves, the Chronicle, mods and achievements. The result is a one-page finding, and we will tell you what it says either way.

As always

Bugs go in the Bug List thread, we read the Discord suggestions channel every week, and thank you for playing.